Theatre festival to pay tribute to playwright Mohan Rakesh

Sahitya Kala Parishad, the Delhi government’s art and culture arm, will showcase four plays here at Kamani Auditorium from Tuesday to pay tribute to playwright Mohan Rakesh. The ‘Mohan Rakesh Natya Samaroh’ will see plays that are chosen through an all-India Mohan Rakesh Natya Lekhan competition. (Also read: The love story of Anita and Mohan Rakesh)

The theatre festival will open with “Dhanpati Nawab Se Prem”, written by Shri Ram Sharma ‘Kapren’ and directed by Surender Sharma.

Over the course of next three days, the theatre-goers will get to see Dr Pratibha Jain’s “Mahasharman Chandragupta Maurya”, which is directed by Bharti Sharma; Dayanand Sharma’s “Ishq Samandar”, directed by Ayaz Khan; and Rajesh Kumar’s “Nishabd”, directed by Lokendra Trivedi.

Monica Priyadarshini, secretary – Sahitya Kala Parishad said that the playwriting competition received 68 entries this year, out of which four were selected for the theatre festival.

“Sahitya Kala Parishad has been organising Mohan Rakesh Natya Samaroh for about a decade now in remembrance of Shri Mohan Rakesh Ji, one of the pioneers in modern Hindi play. With this festival, we hope to promote and support upcoming talent in the field of creative playwriting by offering a national platform,” she said.

The four scripts will later be published in the book ‘Natya Taranga’ by Sahitya Kala Parishad.

Mohan Rakesh was one of the playwrights who pioneered the “Nai Kahani” movement of Hindi literature in the 1950s. “Ashadh Ka Ek Din” (1958) and “Aadhe Adhure” (1969) are some of his most notable works.

This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text. Only the headline has been changed.